FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: June 05, 2005
Contact: Dan Kimmel
810-433-2277, djkimmel@greatlakesbass.com
HOUGHTON LAKE, MI — A limit of five healthy smallmouth bass weighing 12.73 pounds was enough to give Lansing bass tournament angler Dan Kimmel a 2nd place finish in his first appearance in a Top Bass Tournament Trail event. The Top Bass Houghton Lake Bass Pro Shops Open was held Saturday June 4, 2005. The 2nd place finish earned a total of $605 in winnings for Kimmel.
Kimmel caught his limit of smallmouth bass using a combination of a small suspending jerkbait with customized Mustad Triple Grip hooks, and a white Xtreme Bass tube lure on quarter ounce jighead using 10 pound test Shakespeare Supreme Super Smooth line on a Pflueger President 6735 spinning reel matched to a Team All Star 7 foot Tube Rod.
“I used the jerkbait earlier in the day to find the bass since we had overcast skies making sightfishing difficult,” stated Kimmel. “I was fishing a shallow flat with a darker bottom, so the bass were hard to see until you were right on top of them. They would get harder to catch once they saw me, so if I didn’t get the bass to hit the jerkbait, I’d throw a marker and come back a few minutes later to catch it with the tube lure.”
Kimmel says he had a limit early in the day after catching three keepers in the first 15 minutes of fishing on the chrome/black jerkbait. “I culled one of my first keepers with a larger keeper about mid way through the morning and caught a couple keepers that weren’t big enough to help,” said Kimmel. The fishing slowed, but the sun finally came out about half way through the nine hour tournament, so Kimmel made a move across the lake to check some deep, hard-to-see beds he’d located larger bass on in practice.
“There were two other tournaments going on from the west end of the lake – part of the reason I chose to start on the east end of the lake – so I expected some of the bass would already have been caught before I got there,” added Kimmel. Surprisingly, two of the larger bass were still there and Kimmel quickly caught them on the tube lure. Culling his two smallest bass with these larger fish moved his total weight up almost another pound – the difference between finishing 2nd instead of 5th or 6th place.
“I had one of the last smallies swallow my tube lure and it bled some,” Kimmel said, “which concerned me because a dead fish penalty would have taken my total weight down enough to possibly drop back out of the money places. I cut the line about 8 inches from the lure, leaving it in the bass. Then I put my aerator pumps on full and added chemicals to slow the bleeding and calm the bass. At the end of the day, the bass looked normal. I avoided the dead fish penalty giving me the high finish I needed.”
Kimmel caught several other keepers later in the tournament day casting the tube lure along sand drops into weedy holes but was unable to catch any larger than the five he had in his livewell. Still, he reported he’s happy with the finish. “I don’t fish Houghton Lake a lot for bass and was not familiar with many of the anglers who fish the Top Bass circuit so it was difficult to estimate how much weight it would take to win or place high,” said Kimmel, “so I’m very pleased how it turned out.”
Kimmel’s next tournament is the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League event on Saturday June 25th on the Detroit River. His sponsors include Ranger Boats, Yamaha Motors, D & R Sports Center, Lake St. Clair Combat Fishing, Xtreme Bass Tackle, All Star Graphite Rods, Pflueger Fishing and Shakespeare Fishing. For bass and tournament fishing information, you can contact Kimmel through his website at www.GreatLakesBass.com.
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